+1 as well, we migrated from MariaDB to MySQL, this cost us a few days in code adaptation, and still, we don't want to keep using it thus we're looking for another cloud provider unless MariaDB makes it here.

Here are a few reasons why we - as a team, and any other developer I've worked for during the past 5 years - think MariaDB is better:

MySQL has no default values for JSON and TEXT columns: deal breaker for us, we're now looking for another provider (despite investing a few days to migrate, MySQL 8 is annoying, we're having a bunch of dev/production issues we never experienced with MariaDB)

MariaDB is now default when you install "mysql-server" on many Linux flavors. That means something.

MariaDB is faster, has a better thread pool to support more simultaneous connections, supports more engines, is much better at replication and HA

MySQL chose to change the default auth mechanism, while MariaDB implements actual features useful for developers. Like default values for JSON or TEXT which avoids writing more code when the DB layer can handle it.

MySQL, which is the base of MariaDB, is a product and trademark of Oracle Corporation, Inc, which amongst other big companies is one of the worst regarding their behavior towards Open Source, personal data gathering (you have to agree to stuff and leave your email to download many of their stuff) and that kind of things

It's an Open Source project created by former MySQL creators, just like many things with Oracle, I trust people leaving Oracle more than the ones staying.

These are indeed a lot of maybe biased examples, but guys, don't expect me to run a full comparison. You're the ones supposed to do this job for us, and if you don't decide what's best (or consider both as viable alternatives), then offer both.

+1 Possibilities that offers MariaDB instead of Mysql is the number of databases engines. It is also compatible with many auth methods that Mysql is blocking actually, that remains many manual actions to make applications works with it.. It's a waste of time. Please deploy a MariaDB managed database. Thx

Putting my +1 in writing along with reasoning — I saw the DO message about Managed Databases, decided to check them out, but the lack of ability to choose MariaDB over MySQL is a downer; where possible, it's open-source or bust for me, and I know it's the same for many others.

(Still, I'm glad to see that Postgres isn't subject to limited availability, as it's my DB of choice.)